Last Embrace is an interesting film from Jonathan Demme as he works towards being a mainstream movie maker.
He has a starrier cast with Roy Scheider as a bereaved government agent Harry Hannan who lost his wife in a job that went wrong.
Christopher Walken fresh from an Oscar win plays his boss who has no further use for Hannan as an agent.
Hannan finds a young woman Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin) has moved into his apartment as she was told that the Hannans have moved out indefinitely.
She also gives Hannan a mysterious note in Hebrew that she found left for him. The note Hannan discovers from a rabbi is something to do with an avenger of the Blood, a private revenge.
It all boils down to Hannan's ancestors being involved in women trafficking from Europe who were used as prostitutes once they arrived in the USA.
It is clear from the music by Miklós Rózsa and the direction style of Demme that this is a movie influenced by Hitchcock. The surprise is that this was not a movie made by Brian De Palma.
In fact Last Embrace needed the visual flair of De Palma. Demme tries too hard to reference past movies from Hitchcock and forgets to do his own thing.
The story was choppy and a pivotal scene in a hotel room in Niagara Falls gives the game away. Then again I remember the original poster of this movie when it was released in the cinemas. There was no way out for one of those characters in the climax.
He has a starrier cast with Roy Scheider as a bereaved government agent Harry Hannan who lost his wife in a job that went wrong.
Christopher Walken fresh from an Oscar win plays his boss who has no further use for Hannan as an agent.
Hannan finds a young woman Ellie Fabian (Janet Margolin) has moved into his apartment as she was told that the Hannans have moved out indefinitely.
She also gives Hannan a mysterious note in Hebrew that she found left for him. The note Hannan discovers from a rabbi is something to do with an avenger of the Blood, a private revenge.
It all boils down to Hannan's ancestors being involved in women trafficking from Europe who were used as prostitutes once they arrived in the USA.
It is clear from the music by Miklós Rózsa and the direction style of Demme that this is a movie influenced by Hitchcock. The surprise is that this was not a movie made by Brian De Palma.
In fact Last Embrace needed the visual flair of De Palma. Demme tries too hard to reference past movies from Hitchcock and forgets to do his own thing.
The story was choppy and a pivotal scene in a hotel room in Niagara Falls gives the game away. Then again I remember the original poster of this movie when it was released in the cinemas. There was no way out for one of those characters in the climax.